


Helpless in Love

by Avengerz



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Disgustingly Cute Couple, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Secretly Married, actually just pure fluff wow no angst at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:50:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avengerz/pseuds/Avengerz
Summary: Written for a prompt on tumblr: "Rhodey and Tony being together since their MIT years. They married as soon as they could, and are still hopelessly in love after ~30 years. One of these perfect, almost sickeningly sweet couples."
  Slowly, Tony grins, and Rhodey dares to breathe. “Yeah. Yeah, you sappy idiot, alright. I’ll marry you.”

  Rhodey laughs, disbelieving, delighted, and sweeps Tony into his arms. Tony grins into the kiss, and, wow. They’re gonna be alright.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Potrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Potrix/gifts).



“I know it doesn’t mean anything, you know, officially, but,” Rhodey swallows thickly, unreasonably nervous. “It means a lot to me.”

Tony glances between the ring and his face, his expression blank, and Rhodey flashes back, suddenly, to the night two years ago when Tony, drunk and despondent after visiting his parents, swore that he would never get married. Still, he can’t back out now, can’t pretend it’s just a joke, because they’ve been secretly dating for over a year now, coffee between classes and movies cuddled up on their ratty couch, and Rhodey’s committed to this, committed to Tony, and besides. The ring cost an entire paycheck.

Slowly, Tony grins, and Rhodey dares to breathe. “Yeah. Yeah, you sappy idiot, alright. I’ll marry you.”

Rhodey laughs, disbelieving, delighted, and sweeps Tony into his arms. Tony grins into the kiss, and, wow. They’re gonna be alright.

* * *

"There’s something you should know,” Tony says, because he likes Virginia (what an awful name, he’ll have to come up with something else), and she’s competent and might actually be able to put up with his shit, but he has to make this clear right away. “I’m married.”

Virginia (maybe something to do with the pepper spray she assaulted his bodyguard with?) blinks, understandably surprised. After all, by all accounts Tony Stark has not been leading the life of a married man. Rather the opposite, in fact, what with the partying and gratuitous philandering and all-around depravity. Or so the media reports.

“I’m married,” Tony continues, because Virginia (Pepper?) has to be able to deal with this, “to a man.”

She blinks again, but accepts it with remarkable aplomb, especially considering that such a thing is not legally possible. “Alright,” Pepper says. “Now, what exactly are the duties of your personal assistant?”

Tony grins and hires her on the spot.

* * *

Rhodey knows he should at least pretend to be upset when Tony sneaks onto whichever base he’s stationed, blatantly breaking protocol, but he’s always too ridiculously happy to see him. They’re watching MythBusters on the uncomfortable couch the air force supplies him with, and Tony’s chosen to drape himself over his husband rather than “suffer back injuries from those godawful springs, seriously sugarbear, can’t I buy you a new couch?”

“I heard you slept with the prince of Dubai’s wife last weekend,” Rhodey murmurs into Tony’s hair forty-five minutes into their marathon. 

Tony hums and pushes further into Rhodey’s chest. “Mm, yeah. She really is cheating on her husband, of course, just not with me.”

Rhodey laughs. “How’d you manage it this time?”

Tony presses his grin against Rhodey’s neck. “I may or may not have arranged for a servant to interrupt us just as she finished undressing. A rather compromising position, of course, with a strange man in the room.” He shrugs. “The guy had to find out sooner or later, and this way it made the news.” Tony nips lightly at Rhodey’s collar-bone and Rhodey shudders. “Playboy reputation maintained.”

Rhodey growls lightly and turns to lay Tony down on the couch. “My husband,” he says, interspersing each word with a kiss to Tony’s neck, “is a fucking genius.” He ends the sentence with a bite to the soft skin under Tony’s jaw, and Tony moans. The rest of the MythBusters marathon is thoroughly ignored.

* * *

JARVIS is incredible. Of course he is, Tony made him, but he’s especially incredible right at this very moment because when Tony wakes up from his post-lab-binge, dead-to-the-world, 13-hour-long sleep, a news article is floating in the air above his bed, glowing a soft blue.

“JARVIS,” he says, hoarse, after reading it twice. “Call honeybuns.”

Gay marriage has been legalized in Massachusetts.

* * *

It takes another seven years after that, though, for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” to be repealed. Seven years of keeping it quiet because “this isn’t worth losing your job over, Rhodey.”

“Yes, it is,” Rhodey had argued fiercely. “You’re worth everything.”

Tony had melted at that, all soft eyes and small smiles. “Thanks, babe. But you love the Air Force. It’ll be repealed eventually, you know that. We’ve hidden this, us, for almost a decade. What’s a few more years. I love you, you love me, we’re officially married, that’s all that matters.”

Seven years, though, and Obama repeals it, and Rhodey stands in front of the world, hand in hand with the man he loves. Tony says, proud and defiant, “As far as we’re concerned, I’ve been married to James Rhodes since college.” The press explodes, of course, and Rhodey grins because he knows they can handle anything together.

* * *

Steve Rogers is painfully awkward, the first time Rhodey comes to visit after the Battle of New York. He comes to yell at Tony, really, because “a _wormhole,_  Tony?! You could have died, and I- I missed your fucking phone call.” It ended in tears, of course, and a lot of hugging, and then a lot of fantastic sex. After all that, though, Rhodey makes Tony breakfast _because he is the best husband ever,_  and Steve walks into the kitchen to find Tony slumped against Rhodey, arms wrapped around his waist and drooling into his shirt as Rhodey (the awful morning person that he is) whistles and fries bacon.

“Oh,” Steve says, paused awkwardly in the entrance. “Ah, you must be James Rhodes.”

Rhodey grins. “Call me Rhodey, everyone does.” He looks like he wants to shake Steve’s hand, but Tony refuses to let go.

“Being gay is legal now, Cap,” Tony says over Rhodey’s shoulder. “Or, y’know, bisexual or whatever. Two guys can marry each other, don’t know if you’ve heard that.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, flustered. “I heard.” He grabs a yogurt, smiles stiffly at Rhodey, and flees.

Rhodey sighs and turns back to the bacon. “I hate meeting my heroes. They’re all homophobic or racist.”

Tony shrugs, because he’s hurt but he won’t admit it. “He’s from the 20′s, what do you expect?”

It turns out, pleasantly enough, that Steve’s not actually a homophobe. “I’m fine with that, Tony,” he insists when Tony confronts him about it a few weeks later. “Your generation didn’t invent being queer, you know. It’s just...” He frowns, the Captain America Frown of Disappointment, and Tony wonders if he’s kicked any puppies recently. “Rhodes seems like a good man. If you really have been married since college, well... he deserves better.”

Tony stares at Steve for a long moment, completely befuddled. Then it clicks, and he bursts out laughing. “Oh! All the playboy stuff!”

Steve’s frown gets even more disapproving, which Tony hadn’t thought was possible. “I don’t see what’s so funny.”

“Oh, right, yeah, that was all tricks.”

“What?”

“Deception,” Tony waves a hand lazily, “lies to fool the media. I haven’t slept with anyone but Rhodey in almost thirty years.”

Turns out talking about sex can still make Steve blush, but things settle between them, after that.

* * *

Besides Rogers (“who’s not actually homophobic, babe, he just thought I was cheating on you, we’re all good now”), the rest of the so-called “Avengers” accept Rhodey readily enough. Which is good, because Rhodey can tell that this group of super-powered miscreants have wormed their way into Tony’s heart, and it’d hurt him tremendously if they couldn’t accept his husband.

That’s not to say there’s never any tension between them.

“Ugh,” Clint says as he chucks a piece of popcorn at them. He’s got perfect aim, of course, and it bounces off Tony’s forehead and into Rhodey’s lap. “Could you guys please stop being disgustingly cute? You've been married for, like, 30 years, the honeymoon phase should be over by now."

“You’re just jealous,” Tony mumbles into Rhodey’s shoulder, just loud enough to be heard over the opening credits of Star Wars IV. 

“You damn right, I am,” Clint shoots back. “Nat refuses to cuddle with me and I’m resentful.”

Natasha flicks popcorn back at Clint. “You get cuddles when you deserve it, Barton, and last week you dove off a building without a grappling arrow. Stop being rude to Tony, he’s the reason you’re not a splatter mark on concrete right now.”

Clint pouts and Tony laughs and Rhodey grins and runs his fingers through Tony’s hair, and, wow. They’re gonna be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find myself and my writing at my [tumblr!](http://anthonyfuckingstark.tumblr.com)


End file.
